Fecal Soup

Connect with Us

Make sustainable dietary changes. Sign up for the free 21 Day Vegan Kickstart. Participants receive daily messages for a step-by-step diet makeover, including recipes and nutrition webcasts.Go >

Fecal Soup in Chicken Products

Poultry Slaughter Procedures, a USDA training video recently obtained by the Physicians Committee through the Freedom of Information Act, reveals that the chicken slaughtering process ends with carcasses soaking in cold water—“fecal soup”—for up to one hour before being packaged for consumers.

A federal inspector said, “We often see birds going down the line with intestines still attached, which are full of fecal contamination. If there is no fecal contamination on the bird’s skin, however, we can do nothing to stop that bird from going down that line. It is more than reasonable to assume that once the bird gets into the chill tank, that contamination will enter the water and contaminate all of the other carcasses in the chiller. That’s why it is sometimes called ‘fecal soup.’”